Fifty Years of Memories

Fuller graduates from the early 1960s share stories at reunion :: 10/19/12

Em Griffin (MDiv ’63) remembers that final exam with New Testament Professor George Eldon Ladd like it was yesterday. For Griffin, studying for the exam had taken a back seat to socializing with his classmates. The day of the final, Dr. Ladd offered a prayer: “Lord, may this examination be a credible reflection of the stewardship of your servants.” Griffin and a buddy shot each other a look of dire alarm. “We thought, ‘No, no, no! Don’t listen to that prayer, Lord!’”

Such stories were in plentiful supply at a two-day 50^th reunion celebration held recently at Fuller’s Pasadena campus. Members of Fuller’s 1961, 1962, and 1963 graduating classes—traveling from Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, Louisiana, and a number of other locations—gathered for connecting, reminiscing, hearing about what’s new on campus, and catching up on 50 years of ministry experiences in between. Over those 50 years these men and women had been pastors, missionaries, professors, nonprofit leaders, writers, psychotherapists, chaplains—living in places from Indonesia and Japan to small towns and big cities across the U.S.

Many fond memories of Fuller life in the early 1960s were shared over those two days, with several of the reminiscences—many humorous, some poignant—highlighted at a concluding dinner.

Marvin Eyler (BD ’62, DMiss '96)  recounted how he worked the overnight shift at an Altadena boy’s school during his Fuller days, getting off work at 5:00 a.m. Not knowing what else to do at that hour, he would go the Fuller refectory for coffee and a little studying—where, every day at 6:15 a.m., faculty member Wilbur Smith would come for his coffee and class preparation. “He always looked annoyed that I was there before him,” said a laughing Eyler about the characteristically gruff professor, “and he started coming earlier and earlier. One day he glared at me and just grunted, ‘What do you do, get all A’s?’”

More seriously, Russ Stevenson (BD '61) shared that, during the summer before he started at Fuller, doubts about his faith overwhelmed him. By the time he began classes, he had decided he was an atheist. But “Fuller dealt with me gently,” recalled Stevenson, “with a warm evangelicalism that allowed me to wrestle with my doubts”—and to let Jesus’s voice bring him back. “It had to be at Fuller,” he said. “This wouldn’t have happened anywhere else.”

Michael Cassidy (BD '63), honoredas Fuller’s 2012 Distinguished Alumnus of the Year while at the reunion, spoke of how he discovered Fuller. Having come to the Christian faith in England through the influence of Billy Graham, Cassidy then decided he wanted to go to seminary in the U.S. “But the only Christian I had ever heard of in America was Billy Graham—so I wrote him a letter,” he recounted, asking for guidance on which seminary to attend.

The person at the Billy Graham organization who happened to open that letter was Harry Kawahara, a Fuller student—and he was the one who wrote back to Cassidy, telling him of the Pasadena seminary. Cassidy soon got to know Kawahara, along with a few more of Kawahara’s colleagues who were also from Fuller. “I loved the package I saw in these young men,” recalled Cassidy. “They seemed to love Jesus, to love the Bible. I was seeing the incarnation of something that attracted me.”

So Cassidy went to Fuller—which was where, through the hands-on support and encouragement of founder Charles E. Fuller, he started his evangelism ministry African Enterprise, now operating in 10 countries across Africa.

“To think that my whole life turned on one letter, in one mailbag,” mused Cassidy, “that ended up on the desk of one Fuller Seminary student.”